Quotes • Headscratchers • Playing With • Useful Notes • Analysis • Image Links • Haiku • Laconic |
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The truth? Hex wants the truth. Where to start? The most important truth you never learned, Hexxie boy is that when the chips are down, The Doctor only ever thinks about himself. You see, it's just a chess game for him. He is the King — All clever and very impressive but very hands-off with the nitty-gritty. He sits at the back and sends everyone else rushing about, doing his dirty work, all those plans and strategies and tinkering, sending wave after wave of pawns to die while he keeps his concience clean.
—On the Seventh Doctor, Big Finish Doctor Who, A Death In The Family
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All warfare is based on deception.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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It's like you're playing checkers... And I'm playing chess.
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The Patrician disliked the word 'dictator.' It affronted him. He never told anyone what to do. He didn't have to, that was the wonderful part. A large part of his life consisted of arranging matters so that this state of affairs continued [...] Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvelous thing. Once you understood where its levers were.
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You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, —Nick Cave, "Red Right Hand"
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I really can't stand bastards like you guys who think they can plan out every little thing!
—Aisha Clan-Clan, Outlaw Star
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Everything happens for a reason, little one. And that reason is me.
—The "Voice of Tzeentch", Warhammer 40000
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Thank God I'm only watching the game - controlling it —One Night in Bangkok, The American, Chess
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Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.
—Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi
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Humans aren't chess pieces, they do after all have free will--to some degree--but a good player can still use them. In fact, playing humans is harder. Or maybe I should say it simply requires different skills.
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Danny: "I don't understand..." |
I love it when a plan comes together.
—Col. Hannibal Smith, The A-Team
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"Now you understand? Can you see the mind behind all these events that would seem to be entirely random? In our world, everything happens to serve an end. Everything has its reason and its logic. And those who wont move under these maxims only deserve to lick the boots of those who have reason in both hands. And if something as simple as a man, a woman and a book, put an end to all of your glory, then you are nothing. You have no power. You're not intelligent nor wise. You are not Materia nor important. Just a pawn in a good position."
—Lorenzo, Crónicas de un Mundo Perdido
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Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new square by the sly; if your bishop, at your castling, could wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten by your own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his instruments.
—Felix Holt by George Eliot
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Glon: I'm just going to go put into motion a chain of events that will rock the very foundations of the seats of power from here to the outer edges of the North Realm. —Yet another Fantasy gamer comic
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All the pieces matter.
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Hook, line... and sinker.
—Simon Gruber, Die Hard With a Vengeance
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Information is my weapon Shepard.
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"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organised. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed--the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organised and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught--never so much as suspected."
—Sherlock Holmes, "The Final Problem"
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Life is essentially a chess game. |
"Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next. Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you. Remember that, Sansa, when you come to play the game." —Littlefinger and Sansa, A Song of Ice and Fire
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The Lieutenant: We just got word. The Council defied your threat. They're keep the Pro-Bending arena open. |